Our Bedroom Project Part 3 – After

Here is the final reveal post and a guided tour around our bedroom, as specially requested by Rob who has been telling me to hurry up and publish this post!

Yes, that’s Rob, my other half who lives with me and sees this room every day! He is also pretty much the only person who reads this blog* and my biggest cheerleader bless him!

After we** had finished the decorating and furnishing part of the room, we were left with a fairly blank canvas that needed a bit of prettying up. We painted the walls in a neutral greeny-grey colour, chose plain curtains (in a much more practical colour) and had chosen simple, non fussy furniture. So the bedroom was crying out for some colour, pattern and personality to be injected into it!

This part took the longest as I am notoriously indecisive! I over think my choices and never rush into decisions. That is in part, why it has taken me almost 18 months to finally blog about our bedroom. I wanted to make sure that everything was finished and just right before sharing it on here. Well, that and laziness.

If I am honest, the room is not completely finished. We still have a print to hang (which you will see in the photos) but lets face it, when is a project ever finished? Rooms evolve and change over time. While Rob and I are not the spontaneous types to repaint out walls a different colour on a whim every few months, I do re-arrange nik-naks and switch artwork around. So as much as I want to put off this post due to my laziness perfectionist tendencies with the (unfinished) finishing touches, I have decided to go ahead anyway and at some point in the future I can do another post showing the future changes and updates.

Gah, darn this overthinking habit of mine! My initial plans for the bedroom had involved soft feminine touches with some granny chic thrown in the mix. All inspired by my love of crocheted blankets, embroidery art, patchwork quilts, kitschy artwork and Cath Kidston. I even won a Tina print on Ebay to hang on the wall, remember?

Welp, lets just say that the wall art gave me the biggest headache. I just could not make up my mind what I wanted to hang on our freshly plastered walls and where. Eventually Tina was sold on (making me a £20 profit!) and it was back to the drawing board again. I had initially planned to do a picture collage a’ la Beautiful Mess and the rest of the internet, but I kept changing my mind about wether to use coloured frames or plain white frames like we have in the rest of the house…..decisions, decisions eh!

As I said earlier, I wanted to make sure the room was right, as once we have finished a room that is that. So I wanted to make sure that it would stand the test of time (or rather – my indecisiveness tendencies!) I am a fickle so and so when it comes to pattern. So I always play it safe and keep things fairly plain and serene in our house. I am a minimalist who loves colour if that makes sense?

Right, lets start by coming through the door, oh wait we don’t have a bedroom door. Good job that we don’t have guests stay round who might see us naked (poor things)! We removed it to repair the door frame and to rehang it on the other side of the frame, but as you may know if you read my blog regularly, I hate our internal doors with a passion. So we could not be bothered to repair it etc, we just chucked it and will eventually replace it when we get our act together and sort out some new internal doors.

Anyway I am digressing. Here is what you see when you enter the room.And here is a little reminder of how things used to look.

Much better IMO! Instead of a bare lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling we have finally hung our cheap Ikea sort of version of the classic MCM Artichoke pendant. Our large colourful artwork is on full glorious display. There is a long story about how I eventually decided on what to hang on the wall involving several wrong sized frames from Ikea and bad decisions, but as this whole blog post is one long story, I will spare you from it!Next we have a glimpse of our new(ish) wardrobes and our vintage teak mirror from Ebay (of course!). We also have a cute little wooden chair which used to belong to my mother when she was a child and has been a constant piece of furniture in every bedroom of mine for as long as I can remember.

A little tip for all wannabe stylists – If you move your piles of PJ’s and clothes from a room that you will be photographing, make sure that they are not reflected in the mirror!The wardrobes were a splurge that we hope will last us for the next 20 years. They are Schreiber from Homebase and are much better quality than our previous Ikea flat pack furnishings. We bought them when they were half price and on an extra 15% off shopping event day, so they worked out to be not that much more expensive that our original Ikea bits we bought 8 years previously for our first house! And look at how much crap we can cram into these bad boys! Please excuse the mess on top of them that I really should have cropped out of this snap.Here is the WIP corner of the room with a print waiting to be hung, a cactus plant that I need to find a pot for and my West German pottery collection which needs to grow.I have recently downsized my books and intend to just hoard vintage books from my childhood, vintage cookbooks and a few much loved favourites. I resolved a few years back to only buy books from charity shops and to donate them back once I have finished with them. So far so good. Except I have been hunting Game of Thrones book 4 for around six months in my local chazzas with no luck!Above – Not the greatest photo, but I wanted to show our (still to be hung) morale boosting motto which we need to see each morning.Next we have our bed made (but still looking messy) with our Orla Kiely imitation bed linen from Ikea and a peak at our bedside tables.You know when you read far too many blogs when you find yourself saying things to your other half like “I need to style our bedside tables”.

Yes that ever so slightly wanky statement is one that I have uttered! But our bedside tables looked so boring with all their practical things on them like a wake up light, alarm clock, glasses of water, box of tissues, mobiles and loose change etc. I had the urge to style them up big time!

I thought about a pair of matching lamps, or even better some hanging bulbs from the ceiling with coloured wire! But we have our handy string light pull already hanging above the bed (as seen in the second picture above) so there was really no need for any lamps.

I thought about displaying some matching Jonathan Adler type ceramic animals, but it would just be another thing to dust, plus all I could afford with my budget was some garden gnomes from Asda!

In the end I just PAPOI. I put a plant on it! The internets new put a bird on it! The favourite styling/photograph friendly habit of all bloggers out there! Boom! Easy. Plus I love mother-in-laws tongue plants and they are almost impossible to kill. Hence the name.My view from my side of the bed. Not bad, huh?

Next I am going to finally finish this post with some photos of pretty much the same thing. Sorry about that.

*Totally my fault as I don’t tell anyone about my blog, bother comment on other blogs or network on Twitter. Or actually blog much at all these days.

**Rob also would like it pointed out that every time I say that “we” did something regarding DIY, that I really mean that Rob did something regarding DIY!

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2 thoughts on “Our Bedroom Project Part 3 – After”

I was so excited to finally see the outcome! I don’t have many plants in the house (partly because I kill most things I touch, partly because pretty much every flat surface is covered in books) but you’ve inspired me to buy some and keep my fingers crossed that I can keep them alive!